The right direction but too vague and too slow.

Fossil Free Greater Manchester today responds to the Greater Manchester Pension Fund’s formal response to its campaign for full divestment of the Fund from the fossil fuel industry. While the Fund has acknowledged the risks, financial and environmental, from climate change and indicated that it will eventually move to a “net zero carbon” portfolio of investments, the campaign says that it’s proposals for “partial divestment”, though welcome, are too vague and too slow.

You can read the statement from Fossil Free Greater Manchester, and see how you can add your voice to their call, by clicking this link.

As Fossil Free Greater Manchester point out, it must be a bit embarrassing for the GM Mayor to have the country’s dirtiest pension fund in his patch when he is hosting a Green Summit (next Tuesday) to “achieve carbon neutrality for the city region as early as possible”. This is hardly credible if our pension investments continue to fund yet more fossil fuel exploration and extraction when we all know that more than 80% of known reserves cannot be burnt, if even greater climate chaos than we witness already is to be prevented.

Summary

There is increasing recognition that endless economic “growth” is neither possible on a finite planet nor a desirable policy aim in social and economic terms. The British NGO, Positive Money, has recently added its voice to this critique, with its report “Ending Growth Dependency”. Positive Money (PM) campaigns for reform of the monetary system, arguing that banks, other than the central bank, should not be allowed to create money. They suggest that this will help end what governments’ dependence on “growth”.

This article assesses their proposal in three ways. First it asks whether it characterises the motor of growth in capitalist economies adequately. Secondly it asks whether their proposals are needed in order to control the irresponsible growth of credit and debt. Finally it considers whether it would help prevent and reduce ecological damage. It is concluded that because PM are very selective in both their characterisation of the springs of capitalist accumulation and in their analysis of the impact of economic activity on the ecosystem, they end up proposing a scheme that at best will have little positive impact and could actually make matters worse. Finally, an alternative set of policy innovations, relevant to the growth problematic, is suggested.

Introduction: escaping growth-dependency

It has long been understood that the standard economic prescription of economic “growth”, to fix multiple economic, social and environmental ills, is highly implausible3. This stems from the elementary observation that you cannot expand the material throughput of the economy (the materials and energy it consumes) without coming up against the limits imposed by the biophysical systems of the earth that we all rely on. There are other dimensions to the critique of “growth”, 1) the destabilising economic impacts of the reducing return on investment as materials and energy sources become scarcer, 2) the failure of economic growth to benefit those who are economically and socially disadvantaged, and 3) to deliver increases in well-being for the population as a whole (once a certain overall standard of living has been reached), which supports the idea that we need a different kind of civilisation ethic, one based on sufficiency rather than excess4. Against the implausible wager on “growth”, I and colleagues in Steady State Manchester have argued for a Viable Economy,

“… an economy that is resilient and dynamic, providing enough for all, while supporting social well-being. And it must be ecologically viable, not causing further damage to the earth’s fragile systems without which life is not possible.”5

The understanding that you cannot grow the material economy for ever was given a clear focus by the work of Donella Meadows and colleagues in the 1970s with their Limits to Growth report6. That report was criticised, largely on spurious grounds, leading to its eclipse and the dominance of the fudge of “sustainable development”, that you can continue to grow while producing environmental and social benefit. The bankruptcy of that idea is ever more clear as the earth’s ecological and biophysical systems lurch into a series of danger zones of which climate change, biodiversity loss and pressures on freshwater systems are just the most obvious ones.7

Not surprisingly, there is now increasing interest in the Limits to Growth thesis. One new entry to the debate is the British NGO, “Positive Money”, which has just published a report “Escaping Growth Dependency8” (EGD from here on), with the subtitle “Why reforming money will reduce the need to pursue economic growth at any cost to the environment”. It is encouraging to see other campaigning organisations embracing a rejection of “growth” on environmental grounds, but does this intervention really help? I will argue that it makes a number of fundamental errors before briefly outlining what a more adequate approach might look like.

What does Positive Money say?

Positive Money (PM) structures its argument like this (EGD: pp. 5-6):

1) “In Chapter 1 we take a comprehensive look at the problems with endless economic growth, and develop a framework to help understand the challenge. We will distinguish ‘economic growth’ as an abstract statistical measure of the size of the economy from the real tangible resource usage and pollution that this economic growth creates. We look at the reasons why technological progress alone will not enable us to pursue continual economic growth whilst living within the constraints of ecosystems. We then outline the model of a ‘steady state economy’ developed by ecological economists, as this serves as a useful description of the hard constraints that the economy must operate within, and provides a vision of a sustainable economy.”

This section is a good exposition of the impossibility of continuing economic “growth”, including the failure of absolute decoupling of GDP growth from material throughputs (something we have emphasised9) and the basics of the “steady state economy” as proposed by ecological economists like Herman Daly.

2) “In Chapter 2 we explore the political, social and economic sources of our current dependency on growth. We do not attempt to identify which source of growth dependency is strongest or most influential, but each of these sources needs a solution that does not depend on growth.”

This section struck me as rather odd. Rather than describing the sources, or driving forces of growth dependency, the chapter does two things. Firstly it identifies the ideological rationalisations for “growth”, that is the functions that the “growth mantra” has in legitimating the present system with its great inequalities. Secondly it identifies the economic argument that growth reduces the impacts of both inflation and (public and private) debt: a simple arithmetic effect. The style of argument though is “teleological”, seeking a cause in terms of its effects. To be fair they acknowledge this, “There are multiple forces that ‘drive’ or produce growth in GDP, …… [the] drivers are not the focus of this paper. Instead, we are interested in the reasons that drive governments to make continual economic growth an essential policy objective”10. But we do need to identify those drivers, the real causes of the present system’s tendency for continual quantitative growth. Get that identification wrong and the prescriptions are also likely to be wrong.

Now comes the crux of PM’s argument:

3) “In Chapter 3, we focus on the sources of growth dependency generated by the design of the current monetary system. We explain how the design of the current monetary system, in which banks create the majority of new money when they lend, tends to generate high levels of private debt (debt of households and businesses) and high levels of public debt too. We consider why these high levels of debt are a problem.”

As I will explain, this section, while identifying some key elements of the current capitalist system, over-extends these elements, neglecting others.

4) “In Chapter 4 we examine how private and public debt can be reduced and conclude that economic growth is seen as the easiest – and potentially only – solution when operating under the current monetary system.”

This section is a useful exploration of the limited options under the current system to reduce debt where an economy is not growing. It sets the scene for PM’s radical proposal in the next section.

5) “In Chapter 5 we examine how changes to the current monetary system can reduce the level of private and public debt without relying on economic growth. We focus on proposals to transform the nature of money creation, and consider the implications of a ‘sovereign money system’. In a sovereign money system, only the state, via the central bank, is able to create money. Because this money is created without a corresponding private sector debt, it can lead to lower debt levels across the economy, and therefore start to reduce one of our sources of growth dependency.”

This, in summary, is PM’s “solution”. It is distinctive but in its key dimensions it is shared by many commentators and campaigners that focus on the ecology-economy relationship11.

A critique can be made from three angles.

1) Why do capitalist economies grow.

2) How best to manage the provision of credit and control excessive debt?

3) What would be the ecological consequences of PM’s proposals?

1) Why do capitalist economies grow?

This is the big question and it needs answering in some detail before returning to the PM proposition12.

We can use a simple model to understand the heart of the system13. Money capital gets invested (by a capitalist, or an entity acting in the same way as a capitalist) in production. The money pays for materials and for the tools (and machines) that are used by workers to transform them into products that enter the market as commodities. The money also pays the wages of the workers. The commodities are then sold, and here is the first clue to growth: they are sold for more money than that money invested (profit). How can that happen? Karl Marx gave us the answer (in what is rather confusingly known as the “Law of Value”), building on the work of David Ricardo and other classical economists. The second clue to the growth riddle is that workers are paid less than the value of their labour power. The difference is “surplus value”, expropriated by the capitalist. When monetised in the sale of commodities, that surplus value is manifested as profit.

That relation is commonly expressed as,

M – C – M’ (A1

Where M = money capital and C = commodity. The ‘ represents the increase in capital over that in the first stage M.

The formula can be expanded:

M – C…P…C’ – M’ (A2

Where C are the commodities bought for transformation (i.e. production P) into the commodities C’ to be sold.

And expanding P gives us the means of production MP and Labour Power LP.

M – C(L+MP)…P…C’ – M’ (A3

And the process continues “Returning with a profit after every circuit, capital ‘ignites itself anew’ like a driving fire that never goes out”14 so we have (in summary form:

M – C…P…C’ – M’ → M’ – C’…P…C” – M” → M” – C”…P…C”’ – M”’ (A4

What was added to this formula in the industrial capitalist revolution was the “energy subsidy” of fossil fuels. In the capitalist economy of production ever since, notwithstanding the growth of renewable energy, the formula is

M-C(L+MP (F))…P…C’-M’ (A5

where F stands for fossil fuels as a portion of the means of production15.

As Jason Moore points out, capitalism’s endless search is for cheap inputs to this system: labour, food, energy and raw materials16. But the core of it all is the creation of value by labour acting on the material inputs via the means of production fired by concentrated energy: the capitalist extracts surplus value by paying the workers less than the exchange value of the product they make.

But there are two problems, and this takes us back to the concerns of PM. 1) Where does that initial money come from? and 2) Where does the increase in money come from to pay for the new commodities, in other words to monetise the increased value after the production cycle?

1) For the investment into the production process, Capitalists invest some of their own money (sic): they do not spend all the profit they make but plough some back into the business. But that is not enough for the expansion we observe. There is another source: credit. PM identify one source of this, lending by banks. This is not the only source: the savings of workers is used too (for example where pension funds and savings schemes make investments in capitalist production, directly or indirectly). And companies raise capital themselves through share offers and bonds.

In all these cases, there is the expectation of profit. Credit is made available as an advance on the expected realisation of profit, in other words on the basis of surplus value to be extracted.

2) That does not answer the question of where the extra money comes from to monetise the profits and pay the interest17. Where does the money for the expansion of commodity purchases across the economy come from? This comes from several sources. When precious metals underpinned currency, in the early days of capitalism, it was the exploitation of the Americas, particularly the silver mines of Potosí and Zacatecas that provided a boost to this extra source of payment (and investment too)18. The inflow of money from other economies continues to fund expenditure on commodities. But in modern days (and indeed going back to the origins of modern banking when voyages of colonisation and exploitation were financed by credit19) it is the further extension of credit that provides much of the extra money.

PM give almost exclusive attention to bank lending and make the correct observation that, contrary to conventional understanding, most money in circulation is created by private banks through the (now electronic) provision of credit. They are right to see the uncontrolled expansion of credit as a problem and explore a number of dimensions to this. But their analysis gets two things wrong at this stage:

Firstly, PM focuses on the creation of money as credit as a central cause of economic growth when from the above (broadly Marxist) analysis, it is instead a secondary phenomenon, a limiting factor rather than the generative process. The core of capitalist expansion is the productive process with its expropriation and surplus value reinvestment of part of the resulting profits. The operations of the credit system are secondary. As Lapavistas says, drawing on the work of the Japanese Uno school of Marxism,

“… finance comprises an integral whole of relations ordered in interconnected layers emerging spontaneously out of real accumulation …. a pyramid of credit relations. The pyramid rises from the elemental relations of trade credit, to the still more complex relations of money market credit, to the still more complex relations of monetary (banking) credit, and finally to relations of central bank credit. The capital (stock) market, on the other hand, exists alongside the pyramid of the credit system, but is connected to the latter through value flows and price determination.”20

There is a paradox here: credit grows out of the system of capitalist accumulation, supporting it, but it also takes on a life of its own, not least under present conditions of financialised capitalism, where the chains of credit, of promises to pay, become ever more convoluted and recursive, and when stretched, cause great instability. Ultimately, if the expansion of money values is not grounded in the expansion of commodity production, then there is always a reckoning, a readjustment:

“A debt crisis is not really a crisis of debt but a sign that a country’s production of value can no longer support the previous illusion of wealth”.21

The first error of PM then, is to see the provision of credit as primary, as driving capitalist accumulation, rather than something that emerges from it, more or less keeping pace with it, but far from driving it.

The second error is to focus on only one kind of credit within this Ponzi system, that offered by the banks. Jo Michell makes this point in a critique of PM’s proposals:

“… by narrowing the focus to the deposit-issuing banks, PM excludes the rest of the financial system – investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, money market funds and many others – from consideration”22.

A further problem is with the empirical claims made by PM: does the creation of credit inevitably lead to a growth imperative? Since we do not have a real comparative case, we have to rely on modelling studies. Inevitably these are simplifications of the real economic and monetary system. In perhaps the most developed of these, Jackson and Victor23 used

“ a stock-flow consistent (SFC) system dynamics model (FALSTAFF) of a hypothetical closed economy with private ownership and interest-bearing debt. Behavioural aspects of the model included the propensity to consume out of both income and wealth, a simple accelerator model of firms’ investment, and positive requirements on banks for capital adequacy and central bank reserves. Contrary to claims in the literature, we found no evidence of a growth imperative arising from the existence of a debt-based money system per se.

“In fact, we presented a variety of scenarios which exemplified quasi-stationary states of various kinds, and which offered resilience from instability in the face of random fluctuations, demand shocks, and exaggerated ‘animal spirits’. We also simulated a transition from a growth-based economy towards such a state. None of the scenarios were sensitive to modest changes in the values for interest rates, capital adequacy requirements or reserve ratios. …..

“Specifically, the results in this paper suggest that it is not necessary to eliminate interest-bearing debt per se, if the goal is to achieve a resilient, stationary or quasi-stationary state of the economy. It is also worth reiterating that, aside from the question of interest-bearing money, there exists anumber of other incentives towards growth within the architecture of the capitalist economy. …… They must be taken to include, for instance: profit maximisation (and in particular the pursuit of labour productivity growth) by firms, asset price speculation and consumer aspirations for increased income and wealth. Some of these mechanisms also lead to potential instabilities in the capitalist economy. Many of them are reliant on the existence of credit-based money systems. …. But this logic does not entail that interest-bearing money, in and of itself, creates a growth imperative.”

Jackson and Victor are not hostile to monetary reform proposals and they acknowledge that in this simulation they have not explored some critical elements, such as housing investment and house price inflation24. But they make the important procedural point that studies such as theirs are needed in order to identify where effort should be placed in transforming the economy to escape growth dependency.

There are further problems with PM’s characterisation of the creation of money and the making of profit by the banks and these have been widely aired (they mostly come from a Post-Keynesian perspective) but I will not go into them here25. Suffice it to say that those economists who accept the PM starting point (creation of money by banks) find fault with their other premises and with steps of their argument.

2) How best to manage the provision of credit and control excessive debt?

To summarise the previous section, the capitalist economy has at its heart the motor of continual growth, the reinvestment of profit that has its origin in the production process where the production of value rests on the expropriation of surplus value. Money is created through the extension of credit and this allows the monetisation of surplus value as profit. It also provides some of the seed capital (indeed at times most of it) for the investment in new production. The production of credit is therefore both a facilitating and limiting factor on capitalist accumulation and therefore on what is commonly called economic growth. It is not, however, its root cause.

But PM are on to something: even though the creation of credit, and hence money, by private banks is not the root cause of “growth”, it facilitates it. It also allows, through the expansion of household credit, the purchase of commodities from beyond the UK economy and its international extensions, helping to finance the globally overshooting production frenzy. It contributes to things like the inflation of house prices26, and the conversion of housing equity into money is another driver of household consumption beyond what the productive economy can fund27. All this consumption is reflected in the country’s national accounts as GDP and indeed house prices, through their representation in “imputed rent”, inflate it too.

Leaving to one side the need to control other sources of credit expansion, what should be done about the irresponsible creation of credit by the banks? PM’s solution is drastic. They want to nationalise, not the banks, but the creation of money. And they want to de-link the use of money as payment from money as a source of credit. The Bank of England (our Central Bank) would have the sole right to create money. Banks would act as its agents. The Bank of England would create money in the government’s account, which then would be spent into the economy. This money entering the economy would therefore be “debt free”.

It is debatable whether this would have the intended consequences. PM set out a variety of benefits, with a particular emphasis on levels of both public and private debt. Yet their appetite for system change is strictly limited. At no point do they make a criticism of the system of capitalist accumulation. Their treatment seems to fall between wanting to improve its operation (for example ensuring credit for the “real economy”, preventing debt from causing recession) yet at the same time they want to fetter a key element in its financing. Nowhere is a moral case made about the appropriation of surplus value, neither in our low wage economy nor in the global South with its super-exploitation along the supply chains that nourish the British economy28. Instead we are offered a reformist package that harnesses the kind of monetarist thinking29 discredited in the first phase of neoliberalism to what looks like a social democratic project of mitigated capitalism.

How best to manage the provision of credit and control excessive debt depends on what the objectives are. “Debt-free money” is PM’s rallying cry, yet can such a thing exist? With banks as agents of a central bank, they would still be lending money, it would just be from a payment account held in their own name: the debt would be to the central bank. This is the inescapable reality of lending.

Consider this alternative scenario: a community-based bank is set up. It is financed by local people’s savings, local business deposits, and some seed funding from anchor institutions. It offers loans to local businesses, with strict environmental and social criteria. But the money it lends out is not (directly) restricted by the money deposited with it. Instead it can lend more than it has in its own account. But it is not going to do that to the extent that it is over-stretched. This is due to a) the terms of its banking licence which require sufficient reserves, and b) its own constitution and governance safeguards. The result is that the local economy has a sound source of ethical credit. The risks of over-extension are managed by the application of sound criteria and access to reserves to manage fluctuations in demand for repayment of deposits. Neither the money nor the bank is nationalised but nor is either private.

Now consider that model extended across the country. These banks are linked together to pool risks but they work in their communities, using local knowledge to make loans that those local economies and communities need.

Rules are established to regulate the setting of interest rates and to ensure the banks do not over-stretch themselves. These are made locally but there is national legislation that sets the overall parameters. Credit is quite cheap but not given out willy-nilly (there are no shareholders who have to be paid on the basis of the “spread” between deposits and loans).

Bundling up of liabilities is prohibited and so is speculative lending on housing.

These banks look like a cross between mutual building societies and savings banks. They make a profit but this is returned to the community after necessary investment in the bank’s operations (e.g. opening a new branch, upgrading IT systems).

The government centrally takes part in the financing of appropriate economic activity by issuing a series of bonds. These are a safe haven for savings and appear as public debt in the national accounts. They (and similar vehicles) are also used by the local community banks to deposit money that they cannot immediately invest locally.

Not all features are described here but these are the elements of a sound, responsible and safe banking system. These banks do create money when they lend. But they lend responsibly. Their operations are governed properly. They do not speculate and create financial bubbles. Debt and credit are parts of the system. Elements of this system already exist, and in other countries, such as Germany, something not dissimilar is a third part of the overall banking system30.

The point is that such a system could be created without adopting the proposals for “Sovereign Money” from PM. Their proposals would not necessarily produce these benefits. In their system31, decisions on the creation of credit would either be taken by the private banks, operating as agents of government/central bank, or by some kind of committee at national level – probably a combination of both. In the alternative system I have sketched, these decisions would be taken by local bankers, working to a social and environmental mission, knowledgeable of the local economy and its needs and governed by an appropriate local board which could be elected.

This alternative system could be established under actually existing British capitalism, but would also be compatible with and indeed supportive of the erosion of that system of capital accumulation based on exploitation. It could also be pro-ecological by design, for example by favouring production that is consistent with Daly’s principles for a steady state economy32.

On the basis of this short thought excursion, I conclude that PM’s proposals are largely irrelevant to the creation of an ecologically, socially and economically responsible banking system: a viable money economy. Moreover, by proposing a simplistic “magic bullet” they distract from the kind of monetary reform that is needed.

The above banking model does not, of course deal directly with the capitalist motor of expansion. This requires detailed separate treatment but the key lies in the ownership of the means of production33. Surplus would have to be democratically applied to social priorities and excessive value neutralised, destroyed, or spent34, for example by a levy on profits to fund cultural activities that are, for capitalist accumulation, “unproductive”, or (less imaginatively) by a tax whose proceeds are then written off, or by currency devaluation. Not all private business is actually capitalist in the (dynamic) sense of ever-expanding capital. Many, perhaps most family run firms and social enterprises, for example, do not continually expand their operations but are content with a reasonably constant level of profit.

3) What would be the ecological consequences of PM’s proposals?

Monetary reform (typically 100 percent reserve banking, sovereign money, or similar) is a common denominator of many “green” policy proposals. But there has been little in the way of critical examination35. Indeed, our group, Steady State Manchester caused some surprise when we made it clear in our Viable Economy pamphlet that we were, at best, agnostic on the matter36. PM do not consider the ecological consequences of their proposal directly. However, their argument can be reconstructed and depicted like this:

but although high levels of consumer credit undoubtedly do drive consumption (which shows in the GDP statistic), PM do not make this second argument in their paper.

To approach the question “What would be the ecological consequences of PM’s proposals?”, I will first consider the plausibility of a significant reduction in damage if PM’s logic in sequence E1 is followed. Then I will consider briefly the impact according to sequence E2. Finally, true to ecological thinking, I will consider the likely unintended consequences of the sovereign money scheme.

The total amount of new private debt, as credit, would be capped at the level of total current savings, so other things being equal, private debt levels should not rise further, and as existing debts are paid off, they would fall (the recession had the same effect at first– people began to pay off their debts and to save more). PM also suggest a second way in which debt levels would be reduced (“Conversion Liability”). On repayment of debt to banks, the money would appear on the books of the Central Bank and not be destroyed “… in effect, the central bank has taken on banks’ liabilities to their customers”38. So, they argue:

“The effect of this is that, over around 20 years, repayments equivalent to around half of private sector debt – around £50 billion per year …..– would be recycled back into the economy as additional spending, through the government, which comes with no additional private sector debt. Part of this additional spending can be used to pay down existing household debt, enabling a significant level of debt reduction overall.39”

Assuming the second and third “causality arrows” in sequences E1 and E2 are operative, then some ecological damage will be mitigated. How much remains a moot point.

This is not a rapid solution, and time-scales like 20 years have to be evaluated against the absolute urgency of addressing the disastrous material flows through the economy that leading planetary ecosystems to the point of collapse. Yet PM indicate that this “Conversion Liability” feature is the greater part of the debt reduction that is to be expected from their proposed reform. There are other ways of reducing household debt, in particular. Some of these are mentioned by PM and dismissed as requiring economic “growth”. But debt forgiveness and mortgage default relief could be ways of soaking up the excess capital accumulation that the capitalist mode of production is generating, and which otherwise go into property and financial speculation40. Alternatively it might be done through a mechanism like PM’s Sovereign Money Creation (or the various alternative Quantitative Easing models that have been floated by others), although there are problems with all of these41.

For the reasons outlined above, it is an ecological priority to cap consumer credit, in order to limit unnecessary consumption and hence help reign in the overshooting material flows of the global economy. But the first step of the sequence (establishing a sovereign money system) is not a necessary condition. Instead, it would be simpler to do things like limiting the amount of consumer credit that banks can extend, requiring, for example, stringent assessments in relation to ability to repay and a variety of support services (funded by the banks) to help consumers to manage and reduce their debts. Similarly, policies such as establishing a land value tax, mandating a greater supply of social housing and controlling speculation in housing, would all help control house price inflation and hence household indebtedness, as well as the use of equity release to fund excessive consumption (the impact of aviation and cruise ships comes to mind as asset rich older people monetise their homes). Furthermore, following the argument that “growth” means redressing inequality is forever postponed, then why not tackle inequality head on, through pre- and re-distribution, rather than via a monetary device of uncertain impact? Capping high incomes will have a disproportionate impact on material and energy hungry consumption42.

As for unintended consequences, by substituting bank credit with government/central bank “sovereign money”, the problem of economic growth remains, even were that sovereign money to be largely directed at green, pro-social investments43. How plausible is this, given the penetration and capture of State institutions by capitalist interests? That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t campaign for State investment in all the desirable things needed for an ecologically and socially viable economy, but we shouldn’t have illusions about the likelihood of success. And under the PM proposals this creation of money will be steered by an independent committee, accountable to parliament (and presumably open to “capture” by corporate interests at both levels). Allocation (prioritisation etc.) will be by the government: we can imagine the consequences of that under circumstances like the present with climate change denialists and fracking enthusiasts in positions of power.

But even if there were a good match between allocation of investment and the ecological priorities for investment, there could still be problems with injecting large amounts of money into the economy. This is the paradox of all Green Keynesianism44: government spending causes investment in the “real economy” which might be targeted on good things like environmental protection, clean energy, health, housing and education, but due to the multiplier effect, the money gets spent and re-spent, and as incomes increase due to the economy taking off, more and more of that expenditure will be on high energy, high extraction, high waste consumption. Moreover, improving energy and material efficiency, in the absence of caps on energy and other resource inputs, leads to the rebound effect of expanded consumption of those inputs (the “Jevons paradox”) due to the release of money previously tied up in energy and material purchase (to which it returns as more inputs are demanded).

PM do note that their proposals are not sufficient in themselves to deal with growth dependency. “Weaning governments off their fixation on growth will not be easy as it is so ingrained in the current system – nor are they sufficient to deal with the ecological crisis.” They argue that their monetary reform proposals “can provide governments with tools to tackle all other sources of growth dependency, so there is then no excuse about getting to the root of some of these causes.”45Yet this leaves unsaid what the root of the problem is. If the alternative analysis of this article is correct, that the priority is to tackle the motor of value creation, production, especially wasteful and unneeded production which drives destructive extraction46 and pollution. Monetary reform can only be a supplementary tool for doing that.

Conclusions.

Because PM are so selective in both their characterisation of the springs of capitalist accumulation and in their analysis of the impact of economic activity on the ecosystem, they end up proposing a scheme that at best will have little positive impact and could actually make matters worse.

Strengthen local economies, shortening supply chains, reducing vulnerability, while fostering an ethic of sufficiency or enough.

Change the structures of ownership so investment decisions are not based on returns to shareholders.

Focus surplus on social need, destroying unneeded surplus.

Bring most banking into public ownership, generally with State ownership of central institutions and mutual and co–operative ownership at the local and regional level.

Regulate banking and the rest of the financial industry, preventing speculation (as opposed to making sound investment decisions based on returns from pro-social and pro-environmental production).

Reform housing policy with expansion of the proportion of affordable rented accommodation and taxation of land value.

Would this be compatible with capitalism? It probably would not be in the longer term, although it could be compatible with those forms of private enterprise and markets that do not demand or entail endless (capital) expansion.

Notes

1 Some rights reserved: Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
I am grateful to Carolyn Kagan, Ben Irvine and Roger Bysouth for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

11It is not quite the same as, but is related to, the 100% or Full, Reserve Banking (FRB) proposals that date back to the Chicago Plan of the 1930s and was popularised by Milton Friedman. FRB is also supported by some ecological economists, including Herman Daly, and by the England and Wales Green Party. Martin Wolf, the senior Financial Times correspondent, also supports the idea. There is debate as to how different the Sovereign Money idea is from FRB, see Dittmer, K. (2015). 100 percent reserve banking: A critical review of green perspectives. Ecological Economics, 109, 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.11.006.

17This is known as the “profits puzzle”, something that has defeated many economists. For an interesting discussion, see Tomasson, G., & Bezemer, D. J. (2010). What is the Source of Profit and Interest? A Classical Conundrum Reconsidered. Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Retrieved from https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/id/eprint/20371

19 Gelderblom, O. (2013). Cities of commerce: the institutional foundations of international trade in the Low Countries, 1250-1650. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

20 Lapavitsas, C. (2013). Profiting without producing: how finance exploits us all. London ; New York: Verso. p. 122-123. For a diagramatic depiction of some parts of this system (in Spanish) see Dussel, E. (2014). 16 tesis de economía política: interpretación filosófica. Mexico City: Siglo XXI. p. 116. Dussel notes: “The fetishisation [of financial credit] is progressive; that is to say, living labour is made progressively more invisible” p. 128.

21Norfield, T. (2017). The City: London and the global power of finance. London: Verso. p. 151

22 Michell, J. (2017, January 18). Full Reserve Banking: The Wrong Cure for the Wrong Disease. Retrieved February 14, 2018, from https://criticalfinance.org/2017/01/18/full-reserve-banking-the-wrong-cure-for-the-wrong-disease/. See also Norfield, T. (2017). The City: London and the global power of finance. London: Verso for an accessible exploration of the financial system, contextualised within actually existing imperialism.There is an echo of the pioneer of Marxist studies of finance, Rudoph Hilferding, in PM’s approach. Hilferding also over-emphasised the role of private banks in the financing of capitalism see Norfield, (2017) work cited pp. 92-95.

35Dittmer’s (2015) article is an exception. He reviewed the related proposal of 100 percent reserve banking (100RB). This is not exactly the same as PM’s “sovereign money”. However it is of note that Herman Daly, who promoted 100RB is also credited with advising on PM’s Escaping Debt Dependency paper, under review here. Martin Wolf (2013, cited by Dittmer) concluded that the difference was “not at all important” and indeed there is a lot of overlap: both aim to, in Daly’s words, Nationalise money, not banks”. Dittmer identified significant gaps in both argument and evidence in relation to three groups of “green arguments” in favour 100RB, two of which (better prioritisation of environment in allocation/investment decisions, and reduction of overall debt levels) relate to the politics of the capitalist State, which I have explored here. The other argument, that investments could be reduced by the squeeze on credit (limited by deposits), could go either way – depending on interest rates: interest rates are likely to be highly volatile under a 100RB system. I am unclear whether that would be the case for PM’s model. Dittmer, K. (2015). 100 percent reserve banking: A critical review of green perspectives. Ecological Economics, 109, 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.11.006

37This is something of a simplification – there are other circuits involved. For example, there is also a significant transmission through credit to inflated unproductive housing asset prices leading to an increased requirement for income to maintain living standards, via earnings but also via further expansion of consumer credit This is true for both working class home owners and for renters (~40% of households in the UK). This has also been a large value transfer to the asset owning class, facilitating their luxury consumption and growing the amount of money capital (invested wealth) which seeks re-valorization.

43 Such money in any case, in subsequent iterations of the cycles of production and exchange, goes into the pockets of consumers in the form of increased wages. This undermines the argument that reflation of the economy need not have environmental consequences so long as the money goes on pro-environmental investments.

Is the UK Labour party facing up to a post-growth future?

For longer than most of us have been around, the major political parties have been united by the goal of making more economic “growth” happen. They have been divided on the means, but there has been little or no disagreement about the goal. Only the Green Party has taken a somewhat different line, at times questioning the primary goal of “growth”, although I would argue that, even in their case, this focus has been inconsistent and poorly developed2.

In a recent piece for the Labour affiliated socialist society SERA (“Labour’s Environment Campaign”), Labour front bencher, Chi Onwurah, in a piece I have replied to3, argues that this is what distinguishes Labour from the Greens:

“But what distinguishes us from the Green Party is their belief that economic growth and environmental sustainability cannot go hand in hand, that sustainability means abandoning the quest for greater economic prosperity and achieving a ‘steady-state’ of zero growth.”

However, there are indications that some sections of the Labour movement are at last beginning to accept that the pursuit of economic growth is highly problematic, and beginning to explore some alternatives. This ought not to be surprising, given the influence of the ecology movement on the New Left of late 60s and 70s. The New Left had some influence on Labour via things like the Greater London Council administration and the Institute for Workers Control, as well as through the influx of activists, feminist, Marxist, environmentalist, pacifist. However, the influence was marginalised both what Raymond Williams4 called the “productivism” of the mainstream labour movement and Labour’s neoliberal turn under Kinnock and Blair5.

I’ll review the evidence, or rather the straws in the wind, for an opening to the critique of “growth”,consider why it has been difficult for Labour politicians to accept the idea of a steady state economy, post-growth or degrowth, and finally look at what a Labour post-growth approach might look like6. I will draw upon things I’ve written elsewhere but also add in some new material.

5Going further back, the socialisms of William Morris and Robert Blatchford both had a strong ecological streak as did what were arguably even earlier roots of the British socialist consciousness in the peasants’ revolt and the mobilisation of Diggers and Levellers during the English revolution.

6For convenience I will use these terms, degrowth, post-growth and refer to the Limits to Growth and the Steady State Economy in a rather interchangeable way: there are, however some distinctions among them. See Kerschner, C. (2010). Economic de-growth vs. steady-state economy. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18(6), 544–551. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.10.019; Demaria, F., Schneider, F., Sekulova, F., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2013). What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement. Environmental Values, 22(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327113X13581561725194For an overview of degrowth as a community of ideas and practice, see D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.). (2014). Degrowth: a vocabulary for a new era. Abingdon, Routledge.

The article below is a slightly longer version of the piece published on the SERA (Labour Environment Campaign) website on 17 December, 2017. See also this piece, also by Mark, which was carried on the Left Foot Forward website, in response to John McDonnell’s speech which acknowledged the Limits to Growth. Look out for a longer, more analytical piece coming soon! SSM is a non-party group (collective members are members of more than one party, and of none) but we think it important to be aware of, and engage with political actors – parties, other organisations and individuals.

Practical degrowth for Labour: a response to Chi Onwurah

Mark H Burton

As the size of the world economy has grown, so too has the pressure it places on our ecosystems. The consequences of that pressure are now becoming all too apparent. John McDonnell

Chi Onwurah praises economic growth but unfortunately combines a number of misunderstandings of the steady state and degrowth approach.

Every day the evidence mounts that industrial civilisation has reached a state of ecological overshoot and is heading for collapse. Climate change is the most obvious aspect, as scientists from Stockholm’s Resilience Centre have made clear with the concept of Planetary Boundaries. In 2015 they found that four of these planetary boundaries had already been crossed. Biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use have all reached dangerous levels.

This scenario was presented by the “Limits to Growth” scientists in 1972. It was confirmed in their update report of 2004 and by University of Melbourne studies in 2008 and 2014. What other economic forecasting model has been so accurate over such a long time-scale?

Chi distances the Labour Party from the Green Party on economic growth. Eight Labour MPs including Daniel Zeichner and Barry Gardiner are on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Limits to Growth, chaired by Caroline Lucas. The possibility of economic growth on a finite planet is not a question of party affiliation but of scientific evidence: there is some evidence, probably temporary, of decoupling of CO2 emissions from GDP growth, in a few economies, at far less than the annual rate needed to mitigate climate change. There is none on other material use.

Solar energy is great but materials can’t be synthesised from sunlight and there are increasing carbon emissions from concrete and steel production, deforestation and soil destruction.

Technology can facilitate economic and social change but the economy is material, embedded in the ecosystem. ICT relies on vast expenditures of energy, copper, rare earths, water, and so on, which all impose limits on scale.

The present economic model depends on treadmill growth but degrowth to a steady state economy could be a planned, managed process. Socialists believe in taking control of the economy rather than it commanding us. Ecological economists Peter Victor and Tim Jackson have demonstrated that ceasing GDP growth needn’t increase poverty and unemployment. It does mean rejecting some shibboleths like the desirability of increasing productivity. But planetary limits do mean a radical reduction of consumption which can only be achieved fairly with planning and redistribution. This could mean escape from the treadmill of competition for status via consumption, with its deadly societal consequences, instead nurturing people’s capacities, conviviality, solidarity and stewardship.

Does it mean turning our backs on the global South? No, our wealth has been acquired through exploitation of those regions in concert with exploitation of workers here, and our prosperity still depends on exploitation those in the Global South. Our growth economy, with its insatiable consumption, continues to ravage the South through resource theft, hyper-exploitation, dispossession, rigged trading mechanisms and more. Degrowth could be a win-win, strengthening both our economies and those of the global South, freeing them from the malign environmental, social and economic impacts of extractivism.

Some sectors will have to grow, the “replacement economy” of socially and environmentally benign production. Whilst much of Labour’s economic and industrial approach is appropriate, it is only ecologically realistic if the aggregate level of resource throughput decreases and then stays stable. You can’t have that and overall growth.

Repeating the mantra of “growth” avoids devising and securing support for unprecedented and innovative policies. Like these:

10. Establish environmental limits, via absolute and diminishing caps on the CO2that can be produced and the material resources the country uses, including emissions and materials embedded in imported products.

This isn’t a full programme for a steady state economy but it demonstrates how, far from suggesting something impractical and unpopular, SERA could and should promote a genuinely ecological literate and socialist approach: degrowth.

Note:
* Some of the ideas in this list first appeared in a piece by Giorgos Kallis. Some have been reframed for the British context. Others have been added here. Other notable attempts to construct a practical post-growth/degrowth/steady state policy set include those in the 2010 Enough is Enough report and the subsequent book by O’Neill, Deitz and Jones.

Why do people move, or not move? What impacts does moving have on places that people move to? What about the impacts on places that people have left behind? These were some of the questions we discussed at Steady State Manchester’s recent ‘Moving on up?’ discussion.

(from openclipart, by “worker”)

At Steady State Manchester, we have developed policies and positions within the Viable Economy that begin to address the question of mobility.1 For example, we put forward alternative ways of thinking about migration and population, capital investment and localisation, and inequality and regional differences. Each of these incorporates mobility in some way. However, within these are different kinds of mobility. On the one hand, mobility can refer to the geographical process of moving around, or to a more abstract understanding of moving between socioeconomic classes, or to the flows of capital. These can likewise be understood at the individual, regional, national or international scales. Finally, there is a time aspect: are we considering the mobility of everyday life, or the longer-term and more permanent residential mobility?

In order to develop Steady State Manchester’s understanding of mobility, we view the physical mobility of people in the world as an issue with impacts on Mancunians, with clear implications from the global scale to the local. Indeed, the decision of people to move (or not) relates to questions of local infrastructure, global events, socioeconomic class and capital flows. For example, in Manchester, this can include a tram line linking the wealthy suburbs of the city, a refugee fleeing war-torn Syria and settling in Salford, a new bicycle lane connecting Manchester and Didsbury, global capital funding of massive new high-rise apartments, or a Northerner settling in London because “that’s where the jobs are.” Each of these involves the physical, spatial mobility of people, either in daily life or more permanent mobility, and occurring at both global and local scales. This phenomenon is also being repeated in urban areas around the globe.

To clarify our position on mobility, we sought to have a discussion with people from the Greater Manchester area about this very issue, which we hope to inform our advocacy, research and publications, but also to develop a clear position ahead of the new draft Greater Manchester Spatial Framework (GMSF) publication in June 2018. The first draft of this document was woefully inadequate. Indeed, the Executive Summary resembles an out-of-touch plan to pursue ‘growth’ (mentioned 15 times), at all costs, barely accounting for the residents (4 mentions) or even people (6 mentions) impacted by this. A second draft is being written in response to over 20,000 comments, but we are preparing for the real possibility that this new spatial strategy will again inadequately reflect the long term interests of Greater Manchester’s people, let alone even consider limiting the economic ‘growth’ that harms the natural ecosystems and environment. A spatial plan for Greater Manchester ought to take account of the many reasons why people might make a ‘mobility decision’ to move to this area, or how likewise how an ‘immobility decision’ is reached. So, we felt that our understanding of physical, residential mobility – with clear economic, social and ecological implications – should be informed by the thinking of interested people from the Greater Manchester area.

The range of unique perspectives at the discussion provoked some stimulating conversation about mobility, and surely will contribute toward our organisational position on the GMSF – and on mobility more broadly, into the future. Below is a brief summary.The first part of the evening was a brainstorm exercise in groups around the question of why people move, or don’t move. This generated considerable conversation both within and between the groups. At the end, each group recorded the reasons they came up with on sticky post-its, then put them all on a flipboard sheet. A wide variety of reasons for moving or not moving – what seems appropriately called a ‘mobility decision’ – were identified (see Table 1, below). Broadly, five categories of drivers emerged: economic, necessity, government policy, identity, and social relationships.

Then, a second exercise asked the attendees to identify the outcomes for people moving, both on the places people move to and on places people leave (see Table 2, below). These included demographic, economic, socio-economic, and socio-cultural impacts.

Table 2: Outcomes of moving: Impacts on places people move to versus leave

Types of impacts

Places people move to

Places people leave

demographic

-cultural diversity

-depopulation, ageing population

-money sent home

socio-economic

-bringing new skills/ knowledge/expertise

-gentrification

-investment and spending

-strain on resources

-‘brain drain’

-lower tax income

-loss of ‘social infrastructure’

socio-cultural

-conflict

-local exclusion

-loss of diversity

-fragmentation of families

Following these exercises, we came together for a discussion about the outcomes of mobility in the case of Greater Manchester in particular, both now and in the future as more people are making the decision to come to this city-region. This led to the identification of some key challenges, included reckoning with the tension between development and equity, the role of speculative finance in development, a need to address safety and health concerns, the possibility of the loss of heritage, and the potential for regional integration. Finally, we discussed the global issues at play in driving these outcomes, including environmental damage to the global food system. We concluded that these need to be integrated into the GMSF. One attendee’s call for any policy to “start with the pavement” serves as a palpable reminder that these global issues driving mobility decisions have a tangible impact on the everyday lives of Mancunians.

Overall, this discussion illuminated a host of issues that ought to receive scrutiny in the new GMSF. While some have been considered by Steady State Manchester in our previous work, others emerged that present opportunities for further exploration and understanding. Over the next months, we plan to develop an alternative position for the GMSF that captures and incorporates the discussions had and insights gained at this fruitful event. Thank you again to everyone that was able to attend!

James Vandeventer and Steady State Manchester

1 By “mobility” we mean here the longer term movement of people from place to place to take up new homes and livelihoods, rather than the ability to move around a particular place.

I attended a launch event for the new issue of Stir magazine. In case you don’t know it, Stir is a great source for thinking and practice in the (alternative) New Economy, with quite a big emphasis on finding ways to make these approaches take off at scale. The current issue is on the theme of “community wealth building” and includes articles on Anchor Institutions, Local Government procurement, woodland, radical cities, the post-anarchist thought of Murray Bookchin, corporate colonisation of localist initiatives and more. It’s worth a subscription.

The evening event, in Manchester’s new Federation House venue, was well attended (with a lot of people I didn’t recognise, a lot of them from the co-operative movement I’d guess) and fronted (in order of speaking) by Jonny Gordon-Farleigh, Stir’s editor, Neil McInroy of CLES, Matthew Brown of Preston council and Clare Goff who edits New Start magazine (another good resource but sadly mostly behind a paywall). Each has an article in the current Stir edition.

Neil spoke on the need to keep “our wealth” local, making it work for our communities and stay there. Inevitably this leads straight into the question of power: as with wealth, the key questions start from “who has it?” and “how is it used?”. Matthew spoke about the Preston model, where, building on the success of getting local anchor institutions to purchase locally, the council, in alliance with other actors, is trying to simultaneously pull on several levers at once: good incomes via the Living Wage, good investment via the local Pension Fund, gaps in business coverage, good financial institutions via a possible Community Bank, and a local socially and work to establish an environmentally and socially friendly energy utility. Clare spoke about a local organisation in Liverpool that is showing how urban regeneration can be community-led.

This is all exciting and inspiring stuff and I want to see more of it. Yet it is also important to maintain a critical understanding of what is happening and therefore what its limits, shortcomings and indeed traps might be. So what follows isn’t meant to dampen enthusiasm but rather to help critically energise it, so that these approaches can be relevant and effective.

Taken together, these approaches all intervene in the circuits of exchange and distribution. Indeed calling them “community wealth building” isn’t quite accurate. They are really more like “community wealth capture” and maintenance. Yes, the wealth is already there in our urban settlements, but where does it come from? What these approaches don’t seem to do is intervene in the circuits of production and accumulation – where wealth is actually created, as value (in the Marxist sense of transformation based on labour power, harnessing the earth’s natural bounty). These circuits are now global in nature, with much production having been outsourced, especially during the Thatcher years, to the global South. That is why our urban landscapes are post-industrial, and in the regions outside the hot spots of London and the South East, still (structurally, chronically) depressed.

So, once the circuits of exchange have been captured, once wealth is put to use in the local economy, what then? Is this a sufficient answer to the malaise of our local, low wage, low satisfaction, economies? The official model has been one of “capture inward investment, and in the joy of being exploited for profit by external investors, some of it will trickle down” (no they don’t quite say that). That doesn’t work, and we are all struggling to find the magic bullet to replace it.

The bigger question follows, and that is about ends. Is this about restoring and augmenting, what despite the inequality and pockets, nay swathes, of deprivation, is nevertheless an extremely privileged, resource dependent, globally exploitative standard of living? By increasing the disposable incomes across our settlements won’t this do just that? Won’t it also increase the stream of imports? On a global level, we reached overshoot on August 2nd: that’s to say, humanity used more from nature than our planet can renew in the whole year. We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, soil destruction, over-harvesting forests, and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the biosphere can take up. Worse, if the whole world had extracted and polluted at the rate of the UK, then Overshoot Day would have fallen on the 4th May.

Putting these two issues together, with the realisation that overshoot leads to system collapse, then it seems that the “community wealth capture” strategy might be better thought of as a tool for ensuring that we “collapse better1”, rather than as a path to a new dawn where we will all enjoy a restored pre-2007 prosperity, or a 1964 level of well-being.

Several people from the audience (myself included) asked questions that picked up elements of this challenge and to be fair, the three panellists answered them well. Neil spoke of the importance of starting somewhere and learning from action as you go. Together they emphasised the limits of local strategies in the face of central government’s continued austerity policies, the rise of automation, the need for Trade Unions to embrace the model of worker-run enterprises (recalling the heretical left thinking of Benn allies, the Institute for Workers Control, of the 1970s) and the need to “crowd out” the traditional capitalist banks.

A new report “Fuelling the Fire” shows that UK council pension funds are still investing billions (£16 Billion in fact) in fossil fuel companies. The sums invested have increased, although this is more a result of stock value and currency movements than an actual strategy of ramping up fossils. However, it also means that little progress has been made on taking the monety out of these risky investments and putting it to better use. Our local fund, the Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF) is a big part of the problem. At nearly £1.7Bn is holds more than 10% of the total fossil investment of UK local government pension funds. That’s the biggest absolute holding (OK it’s the biggest fund) and also the biggest percentage holding (so being the biggest fund doesn’t work as an excuse). This is risky stuff given that there is a carbon bubble – most of the assets of these companies can’t be used, if even the modest aspiration of Paris

are to be met.
And it is risky for all of humanity, GM pensioners, their families, not to mention people in Bangladesh, the Andes, the Pacific islands and Manhattan. That’s because companies use capital to continue opening up new reserves and then promoting their combustion. That’s your money, GMPF scheme members.

Just think of what good that money could be doing if divested (in a responsible, planned way) from fossil fuels and re-invested in Greater Manchester. GMPF has made investments in housing (some of it social) and in renewable energy, but these investments are insignificant compared to the fossil fuel stakes.

“I spent a wonderful day planting a hazel tree coppice in the Calderdale valley organised by an inspirational organisation Treesponsibility, which is based in Hebden Bridge. So lovely to be out in a beautiful place, learn a new skill and do something with others which may make a positive difference.

“Treesponsibility aims to educate people about the need for action on climate change, to involve local communities in tree-planting, and to improve the local environment and biodiversity for the benefit of local people and future generations. In recent years they have been focussing attention on tree planting for flood mitigation. They work in partnership with bodies such as the Environment Agency, Calderdale Council and the National Trust.

“Hundreds of people from all walks of life have been involved with the project, including local volunteers and landowners, schools from Calderdale and beyond, a wide range of community groups, and visitors from further afield joining tree-planting weekends, details of which can be found on their website (http://www.treesponsibility.com/.

“Since its formation in 1998, Treesponsibility has planted an average of 5 hectares every year – that’s over 12 acres of new woodland per year. This season they plan to plant 30,000 trees; three times as many as last season!

“Treesponsibility is also a founding member, and a key delivery partner in The SOURCE partnership, which aims to take preventative action to help create a healthy, resilient and biodiverse landscape, for the benefit of all the people in the Calder Valley both now, and in future years.

“They plan to expand over the coming years, and would like to play an additional role in the delivery of the Yorkshire and Humber regional forestry strategy by offering help and support to anyone interested in starting a similar project in other parts of the region. They hope to achieve roughly 10-20% of the region’s targets for new woodland through community reforestation. They offer skill-sharing workshops, passing on practical advice on obtaining, evaluating and designing planting sites, maximising involvement, raising resources and communicating the science of climate change.

“You can join a weekend which is open to all. Children are welcome. Access is limited for people with limited mobility. Not all the jobs are physically demanding and people who need the less demanding jobs are welcome too. They were very flexible, welcoming people to come when they could and wanted to be there, for as long as they could and wanted to be there.

“Other weekends are open for group bookings. They welcome celebrations of special event with friends and family and team-building events. Cost per person for the weekend is £25 including all meals which are vegan and home-cooked at the hostel. People are also welcome to come for the day for which there is no charge. They welcome donations

“If you are inspired, I recommend joining a weekend and might even see you up there”

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